Wednesday, March 20, 2013

At February's Melbourne Cocoaheads I gave a presentation about integrating Bluetooth LE peripherals with iOS devices using Apple's Core Bluetooth framework.Bluetooth LE is the new Bluetooth Low Energy (aka Bluetooth Smart) protocol introduced as part of Bluetooth 4.0. Apple embraced Bluetooth LE early on, adding support for it in the iPhone 4S and almost every Apple device since then, including iPads and Macs.

In the presentation I demonstrated an example iPhone app that connected to two Bluetooth LE peripherals simultaneously. It connected to a Wahoo Fitness Blue HR heart rate strap, measuring my heart rate live as I gave the talk. It also connected to a TI SensorTag, measuring bothtemperature and acceleration of the device. You'll see why when you watch the presentation.The TI SensorTag is a great little Bluetooth LE device, containing a bunch of sensors that can all be read over a Bluetooth LE connection. It is handy for development and only costs US$25 direct from Texas Instruments. The sensors include:

Temperature (IR and ambient)

Humidity

Pressure

Accelerometer

Gyroscope

Magnetometer

plus 2 digital buttons

By the way, the technical issue I had with the SensorTag during the presentation was fixed by TI in a firmware update (released the morning after my presentation...).I haven't released the source code to the Coffee Addict demo app I used in the talk yet. I hope to do so in the near future, when I tidy up a few things.
You can watch my presentation on Vimeo: Bluetooth LE with CoreBluetooth.You can view the presentation slides on Speaker Deck.